New Zealand Must Take a Stand Against Slavery

AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND
Today the United States State Department released
its yearly “Trafficking in Persons Report” and singled
out Thailand, Malaysia, Venezuela and the Gambia for taking
insufficient action against human trafficking.

The
Thailand Prawn Industry has come under criticism in the last
week for human trafficking and forced labor conditions on
board their fishing vessels. The New Zealand seafood
industry needs to ask similar questions as the exploitation
and abuse suffered in the Thai Prawn Industry are identical
to those alleged by the Shin Ji and Oyang 75 crews in recent
years. However, our government has taken steps to combat
the exploitative practices in our fishing industry, but more
must be done.

The New Zealand government has been urged by
the United Nations Human Rights Council in our recent
Universal Periodic Review by a Working Group to “increase
efforts to investigate and prosecute alleged trafficking
offenders, and adopt legislation that will expand New
Zealand’s current anti-trafficking legal framework to
prohibit and adequately punish all forms of human
trafficking”. Today, the US State Department make similar
recommendations.

Stand Against Slavery stands with the UN
Human Rights Council and the US State Department in asking
the New Zealand government to make a stand against slavery
in New Zealand by ensuring that the upcoming bill amending
the trafficking provisions is enacted before the end of the
year and to ensure that government agencies, lawyers and the
judiciary and civil society organisations are resourced and
given requisite knowledge to ensure that human trafficking
offences are prosecuted and victims receive support,
advocacy and rehabilitative care. Stand Against Slavery
believes that cross sector cooperation is essential to
ensure that trafficking and slavery is stamped out in New
Zealand. We believe that working together with government,
it is possible that New Zealand can become the first
slave-free nation in the world.

Stand Against Slavery is
an organisation that is determined to increase the
consciousness and active participation of the New Zealand
public about the global injustice of human slavery and the
trading of slaves in every country in the world, including
New
Zealand.

The quashing of the convictions of Teina Pora for the rape and murder of Susan Burdett in 1992 has shone a spotlight once again on a major gap in the New Zealand justice system.

To all intents and purposes, access by New Zealanders to the Privy Council has now been closed. Yet the number of times in recent years when the Privy Council has quashed the findings of New Zealand courts has demonstrated that we are regularly(a) jailing the wrong person or(b) arriving at guilty verdicts on grounds sufficiently flawed as to raise serious doubts that a miscarriage of justice has occurred. More>>

ALSO:

WorkSafe NZ has laid one charge against the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) in relation to the shooting at the MSD Ashburton office on 1 September 2014 in which two Work and Income staff were killed and another was injured. More>>

New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters has announced his intention to stand in the Northland by-election, citing his own links to the electorate and ongoing neglect of the region by central government. More>>